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Friday Knight News – Triskaidekaphobia Redux Edition: 13-JUL-2012

Sure, it’s Friday the 13th… But it’s Friday! And there are no more Friday the 13ths in 2012. This is the last one until September and December 2013, so we’re good for more than a year between triskaidekaphobic moments. :)

RPG Showdown – David Szilagyi

Hope everybody has had a great week… I’m looking forward to this weekend when I get to step back into the shoes of a certain half-breed warlock in Mark’s 4e campaign. And before that I will be braving a raft trip with my family – the trick will be seeing who gets shoved out of the raft!

Quite honestly I was a bit shocked (and vastly entertained) by the very different opinions on the alignment question. Not only are there some great comments on the post itself, but there’s a great exchange of ideas at Reddit as well as on Google+here and here. What do you think?

In following up, I came across links to EasyDamus.com which has two applicable articles – one on a much more detailed alignment wheel for D&D and the other on how to track alignment changes in characters. Great food for thought that addresses some of my issues with alignments. I haven’t changed my mind after all the discussion and new information, but I have to say that I understand better why many people still use and enjoy having alignments in their games. :)

I’m not sure what next week will hold, but I’m working my way through Jonathan Lavalee’s Critical!: Go Westerly game book now and will hopefully have that reviewed at some point during the week.

On that note, let’s dive into the week’s links, shall we? (Keep an eye out for any broken mirrors, ladders you might stumble under, or black cats just waiting to cross your path!)

Food for Thought

Last year I was addicted to JourneyQuest on YouTube – a fantasy-themed comedic web show that featured great writing, solid acting, and some great production values. Well… It’s baack! Season 2, Episode 1 went up yesterday and it’s just a tasty appetizer… I suspect once we’re back with more of the cast involved it’ll be even more meaty and fun.

As my two daughters have become older and we play more games, I’ve become much more aware of some of the stereotypes of women in gaming – in the art and writing for games as well as the creative industry itself. I don’t really care whether you’re you are a guy or gal, alien, or whatever – if you come up with a great game, I want to hear about it and maybe even play. So I don’t get some of the antiquated gender, skin color, or sexual orientation assumptions that still plague the world. They’re all human! Anyhoo… WunderGeek @ Gaming as Women wrote a great essay about dealing with something called “Imposter Syndrome”. She’s not an imposter. She *is* awesome. So personally I think we should just accept that we’re all awesome and move on. :)

Monte Cook had some great articles this week about “what we can learn from computer games” like Skyrim. And I think he has some great points across the board, especially about making the world seem more alive and dynamic through multiple plots… Here’s the first one – and the second one.

Gaming with my girls
has been a treat and I hope to continue doing it for years to come, but there are a lot of things to manage for my youngest – she’s 7 and does really well, but if there’s a lot of details on a sheet it can get a little overwhelming at times. So I was curious to see what Story Realms was up to with their Adventuring Kits. Pretty pictures is part of it, but the idea of the pocket mechanic is brilliantly simple… Here’s part 1, part 2, and part 3…

Speaking of character histories… Do you start in the middle? MorrisonMP @ The Rhetorical Gamer offers some interesting suggestions about having a history where you’ve only defined that it exists, not what it is, between two characters… Or using the buddy system for character creation… Even creating “old friends” on the fly in the middle of a game.

Kickstarter/IndieGoGo

As this Kickstarter project page says… “Sometimes you just wanna kick a dragon’s ass old-style!” Can’t argue with that. “To Slay a Dragon” aims to offer just that sort of experience for the Pathfinder RPG. They’re halfway to their initial funding goal already with more than three weeks go go…

Depiction of Queen Scheherazade telling her stories to King Shahryar in The Arabian Nights. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Have you ever wanted to pick the brain of some of your favorite game designers? There used to be a podcast for that from Ryan Macklin called Master Plan… And he’s bringing it back again courtesy of a Kickstarter. Though I didn’t jump in on time and it’s already fully funded, I’m looking forward to it. :)

It’s time to explore a whole new world… And in the process, explore a new narrative way of creating supplements for gaming. “The Expedition Journals of Amestus Armen” from Timothe Loya has a lot of potential I think… (Stay tuned for a possible interview with Tim in the next week or two where we explore some of that potential. :) )

Meanwhile, Meguery Baker @ Night Sky Games (who I had a chance to chat with a little at the Indie+ online convention this week! Hooray for G+!) has a project for “A Thousand and One Nights” at IndieGoGo – a tabletop RPG revolving around players telling stories… I might have to pitch in on this one before the funding campaign ends.

Or maybe you want to play a toy in a mysterious world where humans have disappeared? Toypocalypse is your kind of setting! As they say in the description – “very much Toy Story meets Lord of the Flies” – which offers all sorts of inspiration right there. :)

Maybe you’re just pondering entering the world of RPG publishing and don’t know where to start? I recently found the blog for Chaotic Henchmen Productions, which features a series of posts about what you need to do as a publisher. Obviously this isn’t the only way to do it – but it offers a ton of detail on everything from getting going to page layout and everything in-between. I’ll be interested to see where it goes from here… Here’s the first post and there are many already.

D&D has been around for decades… there have to be a few secrets, right? Well KQ’s own Wolfgang Baur joined a distinguished panel of TSR vets – Jeff Grubb, Pierce Watters, Rob Lazzaretti, Dave Gross, and Stan! to talk about TSR secrets at PaizoCon 2012 last weekend. There are some great moments!